Divided Conquest
by Teris24
Summary: Balamb Garden has long since been crushed and Seifer is the unqeustioned authority in the world. There's just one little problem......
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Final Fantasy VIII or anything related to it. I'm gonna go ahead and rate this story R in the event that it gets continued. The R would be for language, and graphic depictions of either consensual sex or nonconsensual sex. I haven't decided. XD

**Note: **I tried a new style with this story that leaves more to the imagination of the reader. It's called minimalism, meaning that hardly any back round information will be provided. Everything will be explained only as the story goes on and any unnecessary details have been left out. Let me know what you think. :)

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**Chapter 1**

Quistis landed hard against the floor of her cell. Her back was bleeding and her wrists needed tending to. She had received twenty lashes this time. It must have been Friday.

Carefully she rolled onto her side and faced her back to the cell door. Down the way she could hear Selphie weeping and Rinoa hadn't spoken a word in weeks. Zell had been locked away in solitary confinement, Irvine was kept shackled to the wall at all times, and Squall had been taken away a few days ago.

Day in and day out, life was the same for the former leading officers of Balamb Garden. Balamb was no more. The world now submitted under the authority of the Galbadian government.

Quistis groaned and folded her arm under her head. Maybe this time when she fell asleep, she wouldn't wake up.

Yet she did wake up. At what time, she didn't know. The last time she had seen any hint of sunlight was when one of the guards had opened the door to the dungeon and paused for a moment. Light from the outside had reflected from his helmet to cast a momentary streak of natural illumination across the floor. Then it had disappeared as the guard stepped forward.

The former Instructor stayed awake for a few hours. There wasn't much to do but sit there in the semi-darkness and think, and even then she was running out of stuff to think about. After a while she shut her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. As long as she was unconscious, she wasn't hungry, cold, or in pain.

A few days later, two guards came to her cell. She was leaning back against the corner of the small area with her knees tucked to her chest. One guards opened the door while the other marched in and dragged her up by her wrists. She was too weak to protest it anymore. It was probably just time to get tortured again.

Instead the guards took her from the dungeon and into a bath area on the upper level. She couldn't remember the last time that she had seen the first floor. The light was so bright that she had to close her eyes, though she wanted desperately to take in what she could before she was returned to her cell.

In the bath area she was stripped of her old, dirty clothes. There wasn't much of them left by that time. Shreds of her SeeD jacket and skirt were all that remained. They were taken and promptly trashed. In the center of the room was a giant tub filled to the brim with hot water, and in the tub there stood two girls dressed in white bathing suits. The front of the suits bore the Galbadian emblem. It was the same emblem that was tattooed on the backs of their necks. The girls must have once been students at Balamb.

Quistis was transferred into the tub, taken carefully by the two girls. The water was unbelievably hot. It burned every inch of her that submerged into it, especially the open wounds on her back. Screaming hoarsely, she tensed into herself.

One of the girls stood behind the older woman and looped her arms under her shoulders. Ducking her head she whispered in an impossibly soft tone.

"It's all right...We're here to take care of you."

Both of the girls remembered Instructor Trepe quite well. It had been months since anyone had seen her, or any of the other Balamb Officers for that matter. They were only glad to have been given the privilege of cleaning the Instructor up. Later they would have to tell the others that she was still alive.

Quistis uncurled her fingers from her palms. As her body adjusted to the extreme temperature of the water she let her head fall back against the girl's shoulder.

The other girl approached with soap and sponge in hand. Her frown deepened as she took in the Instructor's haggard appearance. Quistis had once been such a beautiful woman. She was still beautiful, but now far too thin and frail. Her skin was almost white and her cheeks sunken in to an unhealthy degree.

The girls whispered softly to the feeble woman as they set about cleaning her up. Galbadia was currently traveling from Timber to Deling. Seifer had been away for months now. Neither of them knew what he was doing or why he left.

Quistis was washed twice from head to toe. They cleaned her up with soap, shampooed and conditioned her hair, then dried her off to apply anti bacterial bandages to her wounds. She was given new clothes as well: A simple pair of cotton shorts and a small grey shirt baring the Galbadian emblem. Over this she was given a knee length robe that the girls slipped on her and tied at the waist.

Once they were finished, one of the girls rang a bell by the door. The two guards came in and took Quistis, one holding each of her arms. Quistis didn't have the energy to fight or even lift her head, but at least she was clean.

She was taken all the way up to the top floor of the Garden. At the very end of the hallway there were two double doors. One of the guards stepped forward and opened them. The room on the other side was huge and extravagant like the bed that Quistis found herself laid down upon.

She didn't move, even when the guards left. The mattress was so soft and felt like it hadn't been slept in for a long time. Dull blue eyes fell shut. She could have only hoped that such nice treatment meant that they were preparing to execute her.

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Seifer marched through the front gates of his Garden. Each soldier he passed saluted with clean cut precision while students stopped what they were doing and watched. The procession of soldiers behind him gripped their weapons tight, each staring straight ahead.

With a wave of his hand the Headmaster dismissed his squad and continued to the elevator. He had been away for a long time and there was one very important thing that he had told his officers to take care of for him upon his return.

Two guards stood in front of the double doors that lead to his room. Both saluted as he stopped and looked over them carefully. Then without a word he motioned them aside and pushed the doors open.

In the room he crossed immediately to the bed and stood at the foot of it. There, sleeping peacefully was the result of his request. Quistis Trepe. Instead of grinning, his expression darkened into a dangerous glare and he stormed back out of the room. Double doors slammed behind him.

"What the fuck is going on here?!" He cornered one of the guards against the wall and stood inches away from his face. The guard held his hands up and raised his eyebrows high.

"Wh-what? Just like you wanted right?"

Seifer grabbed the insolent man by the throat and dragged him into the bedroom. At the foot of the bed he pointed to the blonde woman sleeping on it.

"Look! What in Hell have you been doing to her!?" Obviously two baths was not enough to hide the effects of mistreatment and malnourishment. The guard shook his head.

"You told us what to do with 'em! We did what you said!"

Seifer constricted his hand around the guard's throat.

"I told you what to do with the _others_, and then I told you what to do with _her_. Didn't I tell you that she wasn't to be harmed?!"

The guard was given no further chance to protest before he was projected from the room and catapulted into the other guard. Both of them had lost their right to serve in Galbadia's army.

Seifer returned to the bed side and folded his hands at his back. Gazing upon his former Instructor his frown deepened. This was going to be more difficult than he thought.

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**Note:** I know it's a really short chapter. Please R&R if you want. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any Final Fantasy VIII characters.

**Note:** Still experimenting with the minimalist style. If the lack of detail gets annoying, please let me know. :)

**Chapter 2**

Quistis opened her eyes and wasn't surprised when the only thing she met with was darkness. What did surprise her was that the ground beneath her was soft and lenient. Then she remembered....

Slowly she shifted and slipped her arm under her pillow. The digital clock on the bedside table read 3:21 AM. All of those months spent with no exposure to actual light had taken their toll on her biological clock and she found herself completely awake.

After a few minutes something moved beside her and she turned her head to try and make out what it was.

"Oh....You're awake...."

The voice was masculine and harrowingly familiar. Quistis cursed the weakened state of her body that kept her from flying out of the bed. Instead she opted to scoot herself to the very edge.

Seifer reached over and turned on the light to its dimmest level. Sitting up he yawned and sifted his hand back through his hair. The bed creaked softly as he stood and grabbed up his robe from its hanger on the wall. Odd hour or no, he wanted to take the opportunity to speak with Quistis while she was still too fragile to walk away.

"First I want to apologize. You look like shit, and the guards responsible for that have been taken care of."

The blonde woman struggled to push herself back against the headboard and sit up. Just being in the same room with Seifer was enough to contaminate her already bleak mood, but being in the same bed made her wish that she was back in the dungeon.

"Fuck you...."

Seifer crossed to her side of the bed and needed only to press his hand against her chest to force her back against the mattress.

"You're not going anywhere. Your life belongs to Galbadia now. More specifically, it belongs to me. You better be happy that I've chosen to give you a purpose while you're here. That's more than can be said for your friends."

He opened up the drawer in the side table and took out a pair of handcuffs. To ensure that the Instructor would not get very far if she tried to escape, he fastened one of the latches around her wrist and secured the other to the bed post.

"We'll talk more in the morning. Now go back to sleep."

With that he circled back around to turn out the light then strode to the couch on the other side of the room. Quistis watched his dark silhouette move about silently. He had taken the couch for himself and left her there in the bed. Somehow it seemed odd that he would have given up the space of his bed to anyone, much less a prisoner. She didn't have the drive or the strength to contemplate it though. With her left wrist cuffed to the bed post, she shifted onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Her back stung from the pressure placed upon it but she managed to ignore it. The pain in her stomach was worse. It had been a while since her last meal as the guards only fed the prisoners enough to keep them alive and functioning.

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Quistis was still awake when the sun began to peek up over the horizon and cast its light into the room. She watched the gradual spectacle with an odd sense of fascination and warmth. The sun was such a wonderful thing that so many people took for granted. Just to be able to look upon it every morning was a right that everyone should have had, but not so the prisoners kept locked away in Galbadia's dungeon.

At 8:30 the bedside clock began to beep loudly. On the other side of the room, Seifer lifted from the couch and padded over to turn the alarm off. Quistis avoided him as best she could by closing her eyes and pretending to still be asleep.

The Headmaster grumbled something incoherent then reached over to unlock the cuffs that kept his 'visitor' secured to the bed. He then ambled his way to the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Within minutes the sound of running water could be heard.

Quistis took advantage of the moment and gently twisted herself to sit up and place her feet on the floor. Her legs were weak and her knees nearly buckled under the weight of her own body, but she managed to make it to the door. Before she even touched one of the door knobs she half-crouched, half-fell silently to her hands and knees and brought her face close to the floor. Under the door crack she made out four shadows, one for each foot of the two guards that stood outside.

She cursed under her breath then held her bottom lip between her teeth as she clambered back to her feet. There was hardly any use in trying to escape anyway. She wouldn't have gotten far even if she had been in perfect health.

Once she was back on the bed she flopped down and curled up on her side. The short trip across the room had taken a lot out of her. Fate had been kind enough to at least offer her a nice, soft mattress to rest upon while she endured what she hoped were her last days.

Twenty minutes later, Seifer emerged from the bathroom in a wispy cloud of steam. The grey robe that he wore reached down to his ankles and around his neck was the towel that he had used to dry his hair. He crossed the room and pressed a small button near the front door before going over to the bed where Quistis had drifted back into unconsciousness.

"Breakfast will be here soon. I want you to eat as much of it as you can."

Disrupted from her uneasy slumber, the former Instructor blinked open those cold blue eyes. As thin and drawn as she looked, her glare was something that would never fade in intensity.

"Fuck.....you...." she rasped the words just audible enough for him to hear. She would be content to say nothing else but those two words to him for as long as she was able to speak.

"Come now, Instructor. I can't have a decent conversation with you if you don't even have enough energy to hold your head up."

He walked from the bed and picked up his comb from the dresser. A few quick swipes with the grooming utensil were all that he needed to bring his hair back into its perfect, slicked back form.

Within minutes there was a knock at the door, and upon Seifer's permission, two servants entered, each baring a tray on one hand. The two trays were set down on the table by the large windows that made up the far side of the room. The servants then went to the bed and adjusted Quistis properly. She was set back against the headboard, her pillows adjusted, and the sheets folded down around her. One of the breakfast trays was set in front of her and uncovered.

Quistis couldn't help but salivate slightly to the sight of a decent meal. Fruits, eggs, sausage, biscuits, orange juice, and milk were laid out on the tray in a precise arrangement. In the months prior to this meal, the most she had seen was water, bread, and occasionally a packet of protein powder that tasted like chalk. She frowned and set her jaw tight.

After sending the servants off, Seifer stood at the foot of the bed and folded his hands at his back. His green eyes were steady upon Quistis, observing her casually.

"I promise it's not poisoned."

"Damn."

Seifer frowned deeper.

"No one is going to try and kill you. At least not anymore. Now eat before I call a guard in here to force feed you."

Quistis matched his steely glare with one of her own before hesitantly reaching for the fork on the tray. She hated Seifer with every ounce of her existence, but damn if she wasn't starving. Her stomach hardly knew what to think when she swallowed the first bite.

Stubborn cooperation was better than nothing. Seifer turned and strolled back to the table where he took a seat and grabbed up the morning paper. The headlines in the news were always the same. His name was mentioned no less than five times on the front page along with words like 'negotiating' and 'surmounting' and 'prolonged takeover'.

The room fell into a silence that might have been considered awkward if either one of the occupants had been paying attention.

When Quistis set her empty tray to the side she leaned back and folded her hands over her stomach with an absent little grin. Seifer was only halfway through his meal when he heard the motion and turned around in his seat. Seeing that Quistis was finished, he stood and walked back over to the bed.

"Now then...I'm sure you want to know why you're here."

Quistis only looked up to the surly Headmaster and smirked.

Seifer exhaled a soft breath and paced back and forth with slow, deliberate steps.

"Balamb Garden is gone forever, almost every city in the world bends to the Galbadian name, and Galbadia belongs to me. I didn't need a sorceress to do what I did."

"You just needed an army of mindless grunts to do your dirty work."

"Those 'mindless grunts' were the beginnings of an empire that now governs the fate of hundreds of thousands of lives, including yours. It hasn't been accomplished before and it probably never will again."

His pacing stopped at the side of the bed where he stood and narrowed his eyes at his former Instructor.

"But the future is never a guarantee. I'm not an immortal being who can surpass generations to ensure that his empire stays strong."

Quistis tried to shift further up against the headboard. She hated it when people looked down at her, physically or otherwise, and right now Seifer's advantage of height was multiplied tenfold.

"Don't tell me that you brought me here to mix you up some kind of a youth potion."

"You were always such a snooty little bitch. Even as a little girl you never did anything but get in my way and boss me around."

Behind him, Seifer clenched his fingers together at the brief flashbacks that flickered through his mind. His youth was one that he would have rather liked to forget.

"But you did have your exceptional qualities. You were smart. Only a few months older than myself, and yet you made it into SeeD by the age of thirteen. No Garden has since seen such a prodigy."

Quistis folded her arms and frowned. Somehow she didn't like the way that this conversation was going.

"So what? Were you planning to take my brain out and make copies of it to install in some kind of bionic soldier army?

"Not quite. An army as stubborn and smart-mouthed as you wouldn't be worth the effort, but your intelligence combined with my confidence and ambitions are definitely worth passing on to others that could lead such an army."

Now the Headmaster's lips turned up in a small grin.

"For a long time I've been facing questions about who will take over once I'm gone. I have no children, but with you I plan to change that."

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**Note:** As always, please R&R and let me know what you think. :) The story might get a little bit (very) violent in later chapters. I haven't quite decided, but knowing how I am, it's a good possibility. XD


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any Final Fantasy VIII characters.  
  
**Note:** I can't help but add a little more detail into the story by this point. Just force of habit I suppose. The minimalist style isn't very good for character development.

  
**Chapter 3  
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That afternoon Seifer was sitting behind the large desk in his third floor office holding a cold compress against his eye. Quistis hadn't taken the news well at all.  
  
A knock at the door disrupted the silence of the room and the blonde man lifted his head slowly.  
  
"Come in."  
  
A soldier marched in and halted on the other side of his desk. Saluting sharply, he kept his gaze straight ahead as he spoke.  
  
"The ambassador from Esthar has arrived, Sir."  
  
The Headmaster sighed and dropped the compress onto his desk. Black eye or no, schedules for negotiations were set in stone even if both parties already knew that a truce was impossible at this point.  
  
"Fine. Tell the B1 guards that I'm expecting their report by six this evening. I want full accounts on each subject."  
  
The soldier saluted once more and did an about face to exit the room just as quickly as he had entered. Obviously the Headmaster was in a mood.  
  
Seifer pushed up from his desk and strode to the double doors. Being the ruler of pretty much everything he touched was a hard job most of the time, and it was also boring. There was no challenge in taking over small towns like Balamb and Winhill. Esthar would prove to be much more difficult.

  
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Quistis struggled angrily against the binds that held her wrists and ankles. Her assault on the Galbadian Headmaster hadn't been taken lightly. Such a crime was only punishable by death. That's what she had partially been hoping for, but Seifer wouldn't even let the guards handle her too roughly.  
  
On the other side of the bedroom, the two guardsmen sat in chairs beside each other and talked softly. Occasionally they would cast glances at her, then one would lean close and whisper something that would cause the other to laugh loudly.  
  
Quistis narrowed her eyes. She couldn't even make the guards out real well because her glasses had been broken in Balamb's takeover. She had never been given another pair, and everything had been fuzzy and blurry since then.

She had to get out of there, no question about it. There was no way in Hell that she was going to be the mother of Seifer's children. She had been chosen for her extraordinary intelligence and it would be that same intelligence that would have to get her out of this mess. It was either that or she would die trying, and she had no problem with that.

  
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"Prisoner number 57382. Selphie Tilmitt."  
  
The guard approached the first cell door with clip board and pen in hand. His partner stepped from behind him to unlock the door and let both of them inside. In doing so, the first guard shifted up the edge of his helmet to see better in the darkness. 

In the middle of the cell floor was a small, crumpled form.  
  
"Same place we left her yesterday."  
  
"I could never lie there on a dirty floor like that. I don't know how they do it."  
  
The two men laughed as the first one stepped up to the form and shoved his boot against the side of it.  
  
Selphie groaned as she was kicked over onto her back then nearly blinded when the guard shone a flash light right into her face.  
  
The once cheerful young girl had gone through a massive transition since Balamb was destroyed. Her hair was significantly longer and her complexion had grown thin and pale below the healthy level. The old SeeD uniform that scarcely covered her atrophied body was tattered and stained with several assortments of bodily fluid ranging from blood to urine and even to sperm. The guards had taken turns with her for the first few weeks but it had lost its fun when she stopped screaming and gave up.  
  
The guards remembered her as the one who would tell stories to the other prisoners to try and keep their minds off things. It had taken a while to break that optimistic spirit of hers, but now as the guard looked down into those unresponsive green eyes, it was safe to say that she had been emotionally and spiritually killed off.  
  
"No change here. She ain't said anything for damn near two weeks," the first guard stated and wrote something down on the clipboard before walking back out from the cell.  
  
The second guard followed him and locked the door behind them.  
  
"We'll have to ask the Headmaster what to do about her. Who's next?"  
  
"Prisoner number 31865. Zell Dincht."  
  
The two guards rounded a corner and headed down an elongated corridor that had to have been a good thirty or so yards. At the end of it was a single door. The door was solid steel with a very small window near the top of it. Covering the window was a slider that the first guard pulled to the side to peer into the darkened hole.  
  
The prisoner on the other side of the door was giggling softly to himself and the sound of something scraping could be heard. No one had actually seen the prisoner for months. Solitary confinement meant no contact with any other human being. The prisoner received his meals, and that was it. Over time the punishment had taken its toll. Legitimate, intelligent speech had slowly given way to mindless babbling and sporadic fits of screaming and laughing. Even if one day the prisoner was released, he would never be the same again.  
  
"That's check enough for me," the first guard muttered and made a short scribble on his clip board before shutting the slider back over the window.  
  
The next stop on the guards' list was a cell towards the other end of the jail. The cell wasn't like the others as it was not made of steel or bars. It was more of a large, transparent box.  
  
"Prisoner number 74932. Rinoa Heartily."  
  
Rinoa sat back against one side of the transparent enclosure. Just like all the others, she was scrawny and sullen. Her hair had been cut to a mere three inch length all around, and along her legs and forearms was a series of tubes and wires. Keeping a sorceress under control required special accommodations. She was kept sedated and her powers were neutralized by the anti-magic cell that held her. Galbadia had found great use of her as the perfect specimen to test which forces were and were not effective against her. The information they gathered would prove useful if ever another sorceress arose.  
  
The guards approached the box and the second one tapped against the side of it. Rinoa lazily lifted her head. Her eyes had mostly drained of their color. Any blue that was left in them could have only been seen up close.  
  
"This girl creeps me out," the first guard mumbled and shook his head.  
  
"She sure was cute though. You see her? Before this I mean."  
  
"Yep. No wonder the Headmaster had the hots for her."  
  
Rinoa lifted her hand and extended her index finger outward towards the two, but no energy could form at the tip. Again the guard made a note on his clip board and the two moved on to the next section.  
  
The cell around the corner from Rinoa's holding block wasn't quite as fancy. Simple steel bars, similar to Selphie's, but not quite as big. The figure inside was obviously masculine. Shackles around his wrists and ankles kept him secured to the wall behind him.

"Prisoner number 26319. Irvine.....Something." The guards laughed and the second one stepped forward to knock his baton against the cell bars. "Hey! Wake up!" When the prisoner gave no response the guard unlocked the door to let the first one inside. One chance to respond was all that a prisoner got to avoid punishment. Shifting his clipboard to one hand, the guard removed his electrical prod from its clip with the other. With a simple push he turned the prod on and jabbed it at the man's limp form. A shock jolted through the cowboy, but other than that he remained still. The guard stepped back and scratched his head. 

"Hold on," the second guard spoke up and knelt beside the prisoner. He took his glove off the press his finger tips to the man's throat for moment, and then stood back up with a shake of his head. "Nope. He's gone."

"We'll have to tell the boss about this one. Wonder how long he's been dead?"

The clipboard guard noted something onto it and walked from the cell.

"Doesn't smell so it couldn't have been too long," the other guard replied and followed him out.

The two continued on, passing by the cell that had once held the blonde female prisoner, and headed to the last stop on their route. The cell was located on the opposite side of Rinoa's containment chamber and was kept in perfect view of it. The man inside was slouched against the far wall. Unlike the others, he still showed signs of life and emotion, or as much of it as he always had since they had him. His body had atrophied but his demeanor had not.

"Number 10036. Squall."

The guards paused some feet away from the cell. The first one shook his head and spoke.

"Can you believe that this guy was the Balamb Headmaster?"

Squall had his knees tucked up towards his chest. With the exception of a ratty white shirt, he had no other clothes to cover him. His hair had grown longer and he now sported a shaggy, unkempt beard. The floor and walls of his cell were spattered with blood, a small puddle of which he sat in now. He watched the guards steadily as they came forward, though he said nothing.

The first guard scribbled something onto his clip board and the other only shook his head.

"I can't believe he's still alive. By now I woulda killed myself if I were him."

"Yep. The boss is kinda sadistic."

"Did he say why we're keepin' these guys alive? They ain't doin' anything but takin' up space."

"Nope. The only one he had plans for was that blonde one," the first guard turned and retraced the hallway back to the head of the dungeon. The second guard strode up beside him.

"Oh yeah, her. What's he want her for?"

"He didn't say. Supposedly we weren't supposed to starve her or anything. Goldman and Padgett got canned for doing it."

"So that's what happened...Think she's dead?"

The men reached the entrance and walked single file up the stairs that would take them to the elevator. The first guard shrugged his shoulders.

"Who knows? But if she is, knowing how the boss is it probably won't be long before she'll wanna be."

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**Note:** Please R&R. :) I'll try to have the next chapter up a little sooner this time.


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